Rev. E. O. James

Abstract

THE Rev. Ernest Oliver James, professor of the history and philosophy of religion in the University of Leeds since 1933, has been appointed Wilde reader in natural and comparative religion in the University of Oxford for a period of three years as from October 1 next. Dr. James is well known for his studies in comparative religion in the school of Robertson Smith and Sir James Frazer. He was president of the Folk-lore Society in 1930-32, has edited Folk-Lore since 1932, and presided over the section of religions in the International Congress of Ethnological Sciences which met in London in 1934. In 1916-20 Dr. James acted as a secretary of the Anthropological Section of the British Association, and in 1928 was an extra-mural tutor in anthropology in the University of Cambridge. From 1911 until his appointment to a professorial chair, Dr. James was engaged in pastoral work in the Church, among the parishes of which he was incumbent being Limehouse in the East End of London, where between 1917 and 1921 his activities in eradicating the gross abuses prevalent among the Chinese population attracted no little public notice. He is the author of a considerable number of works on anthropological topics, among which may be mentioned “Primitive Ritual and Belief”(1917), “An Introduction to Anthropology”(1919), “The Stone Age”(1927), “The Origins of Sacrifice”(1933), “Christian Myth and Ritual”(1933), “The Old Testament in the Light of Anthropology”(1935) and “Introduction to the History of Religions”(1938).